The Problem
- Rural roads are by definition more remote than urban roads or major motorways.
- The terrain is more unpredictable, with more blind bends and often poorer quality road surfaces.
- In this environment there is a greater risk of unpredictable events resulting in more deadly hazards, such as animals on the road or problems caused by changes in the weather.
As a result, rural roads are more dangerous than other types of road in the network.
Potential Key Challenges
- The cost of deploying intelligent roadside infrastructure is more prohibitive in rural environments, making it much more difficult to pass messages to motorists or to enable CCTV coverage in these places.
- The communications network in rural areas is less reliable with patchy coverage, making it more difficult to summon assistance when required or to coordinate incident response effectively.
- Specialist assistance in the event of an incident can take a long time to reach the scene.
- Roadside workers are more isolated and potentially more vulnerable in rural locations.
The Solution
- Providing an in-vehicle virtual VMS solution allows up to the minute information to be disseminated to motorists in any location at any time, without the need for expensive infrastructure deployments.
- In the event of an incident, the ability of a first responder to quickly set up a reliable pop-up LTE communications network would provide invaluable support and coverage, enabling a high speed two way data feed.
- By augmenting the VMS solution with drone technology, it becomes possible to provide dynamic video coverage or lighting.
- Reliable LTE communications can be put in place at remote road works sites, and can be supplemented with wearable and geofencing technology to provide a safer working environment.
The Results
- Investing in the ideas above will lead to improved safety on the rural road network.
- Road users will be better informed about road conditions or incidents.
- Incident responders will have improved support and will be better placed to save lives.
- CCTV images streamed from incident scenes can be used to improve quality of training and lessons learned exercises.
- Roadside workers will be less isolated and better protected from harm
